Vegas' Drunken Ramble - Sword of Neberkenezer
4 - September 2015, GM: Mutu, Hunters: Vegas, Cobalt, Charlie, Darrel, Effie, Player: Chloe Drought Demon ...cont... And actually, speaking of my apartment in Las Vegas - the next hunt was a little close to home as well. …..It’s probably worth noting that my apartment is only a one bedroom to begin with.With Jackie in the office and Charlie shoved in one corner of the living room….it was packed to the fucking rafters even on normal days. I’d sent Jackie out on a hunt but, that morning, I had Cobalt lying hungover on the living room, Effie, a new hunter with a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, and Darrel, a magician on the Las Vegas circuit, sitting quietly in the corner quietly taking in the fiasco. They’re all along to lend a hand in the investigation of the rash of rage outbreaks around Las Vegas recently. As we’re all there, a news items comes on the television. J Lo was visiting at Planet Hollywood, someone pulled a gun on her and now two people are leaving the establishment in body bags. The peace charm there was overcome recently, which is why Arcadia had us investigating in the first place. A shooting at Planet Hollywood is gonna bring every nobody and their camera crew along. Now, I’ve made it my business to leave certain thing of my old life behind - y’know, before the deal - a few people in particular. One, really. And winding up on the six o’clock report isn’t gonna work for me. So when the option for boring paperwork over at my storage locker comes up, I jump at the opportunity. So, I have a storage locker I used to keep all my….y’know… all those things you have that you don’t want people to find but also don’t want to destroy permanently because, say, it’s good blackmail material or it just seems like it’ll be useful for something someday or if it’s a massive sword that feels mystically very powerful and you literally can’t even conceive of how you’d go about destroying it. Yeah….recently that locker had just become my go to place for off-casts from hunts me and Jackie had done over the last few months. When you vanquish some dark warlord or a vengeful spirit you often find yourself with a leftover ceremonial adze or a ring imbued with mystical power that you don’t exactly want handled by the ‘authorities’ but don’t really want to be stuck carrying around yourself. And here I am, getting a call from them saying that my locker has been broken into and I need to come and fill in the insurance claim. When I get there I see that this was more than just a typical robbery - the lockers have been shot off the whole place ransacked. It looks like they were trying to hide the fact that they were very clearly targeting this locker and anything that looked like it might have magical properties. Mostly things from recent hunts. I also get the guy at the reception to show me the security footage. I see two guys show up and make off with all the stuff - bruiser types. The kind you cross the road to avoid, even when it’s the middle of the day on a crowded street. Luckily, that’s just my kinda crowd round this side of Las Vegas. I recognise one of the men as Tall Michael, an idiot for hire from my mob days. I complete the paperwork about as well as someone can when claiming insurance on ancient mystical items and head out. I give Charlie a quick call as I’m leaving to check in about what they found at Planet Hollywood. And apparently, most of the recon they gathered seems to be around the level of security at high-profile crime scenes and the willingness of police to pull you in for questioning if you cross police tape to go check out the exact site of the murder…. So, instead of heading to go have a chat with Tall Michael, I head down to the Las Vegas South Station to pick everyone up. While we’re waiting for Darrel and Cobalt to be released I nab a police badge from an officer. I always feel a little uncomfortable about that - weaponised flirting - especially so close to home - but you’ve gotta use your talents the best you know how. We regroup in a police bar - don’t even ask - for burgers and to share info. Which, let’s face it, is mostly gonna be a one-way exchange given how it went down at Planet Hollywood. I’m also keen to try and finally snap Cobalt out of his hangover induced haze. As I’m describing the stolen items, Effie pipes up. She correctly identified a big sword with markings down the blade as the Sword of Neberkenezer and says she know an expert. Given her careful wording as she tells us….I assume she was at least partially responsible for the mess it got into when Jackie found it the first time. So I leave her, Darrel and Cobalt to give the expert a call while I take Charlie with me to have a chat to Tall Michael about his impromptu spring cleaning of my storage locker. It goes well in the sense that we get the address of the items drop. It goes badly in the sense that Charlie eats the bartender simply for shooting at the massive bear-dog in his bar. We go back to the apartment after that - Charlie needs to be stitched up a little as the bartender got in a few shots first. Effie tells me that the expert told her that the myth of the Sword of Neberkenezer says that its corrupting influence grows it stays in one place….which sure sounds like what was happening here. She also hands me a faxed ''translation of the prophecy on the hilt of the blade that talks about combining to four things together to bring about ‘the ruin of everything’. We split up then for a bit - me and the nibling try to catch up with an old friend I know who works at Planet Hollywood, Cobalt heads off to check out the address Tall Michael gave me, and the others head back to my storage unit to see if Darrel’s hocus pocus or Effie’s book learning will give them a few more hints about where the sword is now. I’m feeling ''pretty good about my cat herding ability… ...Of course, it’s all entirely moot when Darrel and Effie find a Scorpion Centaur rummaging around in my storage locker. And suddenly it’s all Avengers Assemble back at the Veterans Moving Storage Area! Charlie foes some hocus pocus on me and suddenly I’m speaking Ancient Babylonian. I start talking to the thing - asking why they’re here, why they want the sword - when suddenly they go to grab me. Instantly, Charlie is at my side, knocking me out of the way. When he finally calms down a little we find out that the Scorpion-Centaur is a Girtablilu….or maybe they’re called Gitablilu? Ancient syntax can be kinda ambiguous. He says he’s looking for the sword to help him guard a gate of Hell. He seems legit - and at least he doesn’t seem at all interested in combining the sword with anything to bring about the end of the world - so I give him the address of the item drop. Girtablilu grabs me and puts me on his back - Cobalt climbs on as well - and he runs at breakneck speed through central Las Vegas. When we get there, Darrel uses magic to see the address at the time the drop was made. He says he sees a man in a long dark cloak pick up the items and then disappear. I relay this to G and, get this, the Scorpi-centaur just sniff the air and takes off - again at thirty miles per hour - following the ‘scent’ of magic. I tell you - I wish more of whatever-he-was got into the hunting business. We head out into the burbs and arrive at a split level house - all clean and new. Just the kind you expect to stealing dark corrupting swords, really. G breaks through the wall - with Cobalt on his back. He skewers a man standing in ceremonial robes with his barbed tail and grabs the sword from beside him. He turns to say something to me but the spell has worn off by now so I just give him a thumbs up and he leaves as quickly as he came, this time through a portal. I’m still not certain how I feel about how the whole corrupting influence thing will fare in Hell but I do know I’m glad I wasn’t the one holding the sword when G found it. Or at least I was. I got a call from Tom the next week and I can't honestly say that I wouldn't have preferred a quick death by giant scorpion over that conversation. - The Sword of Neberkenezer is a sword with a powerful corrupting influence with a radius of influence that increases if it remains in the same place for an extended period of time. This sword is now in the possession of a Girtablilu (a large half-scorpion half-man) who said that he needed to guard a gate of hell - possibly referring to it as the Sun Gate.